


Nonlinear Thoughts

by Welfycat



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Community: angst_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are still times, even after all Rossi has seen and done, that he doesn't have the first idea of what to do. For some reason, most of those times seem to involve Reid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nonlinear Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Angst Bingo. Prompt: Moments Lost  
> Content Notes: No standard content advisories apply.  
> Author Notes: Thanks to race_the_ace for helping with the title.

There were never explanations on these days. Not ones that were spoken at least, and Rossi found that he usually knew they were coming on before Reid seemed to have any clue. Of course, Reid would be halfway to falling apart before he realized what was happening and by then it was too late. Usually Rossi would have something to say about knowing something before Reid did, but that was just out of bounds considering that Reid's intelligence was probably one of the reasons this was happening at all.

The silence was always his first clue; usually Reid would be explaining something, or even just talking to hear the sound of his own voice blocking out whatever was going on in his head, but sometimes he would fall completely silent and respond only with nods or shakes of his head. This would progress into irritability as the hours passed, responds tending towards glares and distance, Reid actively staying out of the range of physical contact but unable to remain alone. Instead he would hover around the edges of rooms and watch Rossi, like he was afraid to let him out of his sight. For all Rossi knew, Reid was afraid. It would make about as much sense as any of the other theories he'd come up with.

Rossi had tried in vain to come up with a pattern, or connect the moods to cases they had recently worked, but for all of his profiling skills had come up empty handed. Maybe if he put the entire team on the problem, had recordings and meticulous data and articles from a dozen psychology journals they would be able to figure it out. But, really the person he would need to solve it, the person who would be able to suss out the hidden pattern or the key to the puzzle was Reid. And Reid was barely aware there was a problem; after one of his episodes he seemed to have little to no recollection, and no emotional consistency from the episode to the next day. Rossi sometimes wondered if this was because Reid didn't want to know, if he was simply so afraid of what his own mind was doing that he was repressing the memory without letting it ever pass into his active memory.

It wasn't until Reid started pulling at his own clothes and skin, almost always accompanied by a sudden drop into deep melancholy, that Rossi was able to intervene, that Reid would let him intervene. Most of Reid's clothes would wind up coming off, pulling his shirt off, along with his socks and his pants. Rossi would spend the next few hours on the bed with Reid, holding him as much as possible as Reid alternated between wanting to be hugged and held and being unable to tolerate physical contact. The rest of that time was spent guiding Reid's hands away from scratching at his skin, always specific patches above his knees, on his left side and his inner elbows, and stopping Reid from pulling at his hair.

Very occasionally during this time, Reid would speak. Most of it Rossi could barely understand but what he could make out made his stomach curdle and his blood burn. Some of it was awful insults, always self directed, with words that Rossi wouldn't have believed that Reid actually knew. The rest that he could make out usually contained the words 'deserved it' and 'my fault' and 'sorry' over and over and over until Rossi could practically recite the circular litany word for word right along with Reid. He wasn't sure where this all came from; not a case because when this had started he'd gone through all the old case files that Reid had been involved with, especially the ones where Reid had been in direct danger from an unsub. But nothing had come up that could possibly explain this, and Rossi was left holding one of Reid's wrists while he gently wiped silent tears from his face.

Eventually Reid would calm, the frantic scratching at his skin would stop and they would settle into a horizontal position and he would drift into an uneasy sleep, leaving Rossi to stand guard and shake him awake when the nightmares would start. Rossi wouldn't mind the entire process, as much as he silently grumbled to himself about the lost hours and lost sleep, if he wasn't so worried about Reid. The episodes were fairly infrequent, once every six weeks or so, but it was often enough that Rossi felt a growing sense of helplessness every time it happened. If it had ever showed signs of surfacing while they were on a case, or if Rossi had thought it was drug related, he would have gone to Hotch. Because even if Hotch hadn't know how to help, he would have had more ideas than Rossi currently had, more resources and more ways to get Reid to accept that something had to be done.

As it was, when they woke in the morning, Reid would look puzzled as to why his clothes were in such a disarray; his socks in one room of the house, his pants tossed in the corner of the bedroom and his shirt on the floor next to the bed. And then he would offer his nervous half-smile half-shrug to Rossi and look for his bag that contained fresh clothes and wander off to the shower. After that would be coffee in the kitchen, and whenever Rossi tried to bring up the topic Reid would deflect and redirect until Rossi was forced to accept the change of subject just so Reid would stop lecturing about whatever subject he'd managed to memorize a fact book about. By that point, their weekend, assuming they'd actually gotten two full days uninterrupted, was over and they would be back trying to hunt down whatever horror had wound up on their doorstep, and the episode would slip to the back of Rossi's mind because it was easy enough to dismiss when he could see Reid happy and well right before him. Until the next time.


End file.
